The LJ Reboot

All good things must come to an end and I fear the end is now here for the_lj_reboot. For a year-and-a-half we've banded together to beautify LiveJournal one journal at a time and after five reboots, I've decided to shut down the_lj_reboot. The community will remain public and you will continue to have access to all tutorials and resources posted here; however, all posts now have disabled comments since there will no longer be any technical support provided.

When I get a little bit more time, I'll create a table of contents for all the tutorials/tips and edit them into this post so that they're always easy to access at the top of the journal. Until then, there is always the tags page.

Comments will remain open on this post for a day or two and then this post will also have its comments disabled.

Thank you to everyone who ever participated in this project, it was much appreciated!!

The results have been compiled and it's finally time to check out the Reveal, so do a little surfing and check out your colleagues' work! Please note that due to time zone differences and what have you, not all layouts may currently be enabled on their respective LJs as I post this. :)

For anyone who is keeping stats on this sort of thing, we had 17 participants this time round.

( not dial-up friendly )

Our June 1st deadline is quickly approaching, so I'd like to do a quick run through of the procedures that we'll be following regarding the reveal.

The Timeline

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Submission Guidelines

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The Reveal

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Just a final reminder: you can still sign up to participate, and can continue to sign-up as late as May 31. [The sign-up page is members only.] Sign-up isn't required for participation, but lets me get a good idea of how many people I should be expecting. :)



Update (12:07am on Friday, June 1, 2007): submissions are now closed.

Welcome to Discussion Post #3! If you'd like to talk about the progress of your layout, challenges you are facing, or anything else related to your redesign, please do so in the comments below.

Those of you who watch the American version of The Office will be familiar with Kelly Kapoor, customer service representative extraordinaire. Kelly can talk a mile a minute, inane ramblings spouting from her mouth in rapid-fire succession without moment for dramatic pause, rest, or even to take another breath and replenish her supply of oxygen for another round of Kelly Kapoor Story Hour. As she goes on about pink the colour, Pink the person, or basically anything that is awesome, people's eyes glaze over and they flat out stop listening to her.

Kelly Kapoor is what happens to your layout when you forget to include whitespace. It's the visual equivalent of the type of auditory suffocation Kelly so fabulously provides.

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This article popped up in my feeds a couple of days ago and I thought it might be helpful for a lot of people here: 70 Expert Ideas for Better CSS Coding. Not everything will be applicable to your work, but there's a lot of useful stuff in there.

Welcome to Discussion Post #2! If you'd like to talk about the progress of your layout, challenges you are facing, or anything else related to your redesign, please do so in the comments below.

I'm sorry to say I completely flaked on the discussion post for last week, but my computer died on Sunday and I've had that on my mind all week. Anyway. This post will count for last week and this week because I am doomed to forget again come Monday. And as such...

Welcome to the much requested Discussion Post! If you'd like to talk about the progress of your layout, challenges you are facing, or anything else related to your redesign, please do so in the comments below.

Based on suggestions and feedback from you guys, I'm implementing some trial activities this Reboot to see if we can liven up this community.

1. Discussion / Progress posts — During each of the six weeks leading up to the Reboot, I will make a post to the community where members can discuss their progress in the comments and get feedback on challenges they may be having, etc. For this Reboot, each of these posts will be made on a Monday evening (EST); the first one will be made Monday, April 23.


2. Themed Reboots — Themes are entirely optional and are intended only to provide a wee bit of inspiration for those who might need something to get them going. In the future I will come up with some sort of "suggest a theme" post, but for now I've decided that this Reboot's theme is Spring/Summer since the Reveal will be on June 1.


3. Post-Reboot Critique — Again, this is entirely optional. After all the new layouts have gone up, we'll have a post in which participants can post screenshots of their layout, talk about their process and challenges they dealt with, and have other members provide constructive criticism about their work in hopes of giving each person something to improve on in the next Reboot. I will draw up a set of rules to make sure that "concrit" doesn't get misconstrued into an excuse for mindless bashing.

The important thing here is that we're doing all of this on a trial rather than permanent basis; basically, if people decide to take advantage of these things then they're definitely something we can keep doing and if people ultimately prove to have no interest in them, we'll scrap them as they become disused.

The time has come to announce the_lj_reboot V.

How does will it work this time?
The format for creating and submitting designs pretty much remains the same. You'll work diligently for three months creating and coding your layout, submitting it to the submission post which will be posted some time in mid-May. Submissions are due by 11:59pm EST on May 31, 2007 in order to facilitate a June 1 reveal date. If you're already a member of the community, you can start signing up here as early as you want.

Some Reminders

1. Even if you finish your layout early, do not enable it on your journal until June 1, 2007. However, you can enable it temporarily in order to tweak it, but please take it down again after you've worked out all the kinks. We want the layout to be a surprise!


2. You can create your layout in any way, shape, or form that you want. You don't need to use any of the tutorials in this community if you don't want to. The main focus here is the end product; how you get there is your own choice.


3. The only layout problems I can help with are ones that pertain directly to the tutorials found in this community. Remember, this isn't a CSS help community, it's a design showcase; the tutorials are a means to an end but not the point of the community.


4. And most importantly... remember that one of the goals of the_lj_reboot is to get you to think beyond the traditional boxy LJ Styles and into something new. Think beyond your header graphic and conceptualize your layout as a whole. Check out the Rebooted designs from previous versions for some inspiration! Really try and push yourself to do something brilliant!

Please read the About and FAQ pages for further information and before asking any questions.